


We Two, How Long We Were Fool'd

by glassessay



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Minor Peggy Carter/Angie Martinelli, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Steve Tony Secret Santa 2018, Walt Whitman - Freeform, continuity is fake cohesive universes are a lie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 15:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17144318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glassessay/pseuds/glassessay
Summary: Steve Rogers comes into the world as unblemished as his mother. When Anthony Stark is born, his soulmark is an obvious pattern of ink across his tiny chest.It only takes a century, two names, and a shared love of Walt Whitman for them to find each other.





	1. We have circled and circled

**Author's Note:**

  * For [slippin_into_darkness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slippin_into_darkness/gifts).



> This is a gift for [acastleintheair](https://acastleintheair.tumblr.com/)/slippin_into_darkenss as part of the 2018 Steve Tony Secret Santa. It is maybe more maudlin than anyone wants their soulmate fic to be but uh! There’s at least one joke I promise!
> 
> (I super hope you like Walt Whitman, dude, because I absolutely could not talk myself out of endlessly referencing my favorite gay New York-y American poet in increasingly ridiculous ways!! But I only O Captain My Captain’d once and I call that self-restraint)

 

Steve Rogers comes into the world as unblemished as his mother—on the outside. On the inside, he is a mess of too-small lungs, a weak heart, and a plethora of other maladies no one’s figured out yet.

It’s not uncommon, being born without a soulmark. Most people only get theirs after making some decision or another, a sign that whatever choice you just made had cemented the path that would lead you to your other half. Steve thinks it must be nice, being born with a mark, knowing that you were always perfect for somebody; but he’s not surprised to be born blank.

What _is_ uncommon is that Steve—born early, too small, and coughing before he even screams—is alive to see the sun rise on his thirteenth birthday. _Alive and well_ is a bit of a stretch, given the state of his, well, _everything_ , but he’ll take alive. Alive means he’s still around to do something with his life.

Not that he’s doing much right now, quarantined to his bed with a lung-wracking cough. He’s been like this for over a week and he’s going near screwy with boredom, enough that he gets frustrated with drawing and begs his ma for something else to do. The next night she hands him two _Sherlock Holmes_ books that Steve’s never read before; she’s struck a deal with the bookseller, she says, and he can read these while he’s sick so long as he gives them back when he’s done.

A week or so later he’s recovered from this bout of whatever-it-was and ma sends him off toward Mr. Kohn’s with the books in hand.

“What did you think?” the man asks when Steve passes them back over the counter and says _thank you_.

“I liked ‘em,” Steve says, “only…” he trails off.

“Only?”

He sets his shoulders. If Mr. Kohn thinks less of him for what he’s about to imply, well, he’ll find some other source of books. “Only I think it’s a bit of bull that all of a sudden Watson’s got some gal’s name on him.”

Mr. Kohn peers at Steve from behind his shining glasses. “I did think it a bit contrived.”

Steve gnaws on his lower lip. Personally, he had thought Doyle was just throwing in something to distract away from the possibility of Holmes and Watson having matching marks. That’s a thought he’ll keep to himself, though, so he just thanks Mr. Kohn for the books again.

“Why don’t you borrow some more,” he says, and Steve nearly trips over himself in agreement.

_Books are meant to be read_ , Mr. Kohn says to him when he finally looks the horse in the mouth and asks why, _and everyone deserves to read them._ So Steve had trekked back and forth to the bookstore every week or so, had worked his way through the rest of Holmes, some battered Agatha Christies, and even one coverless Shakespeare that Mr. Kohn had managed to talk him into instead of swath of Hardy Boys. He’s not sure he _likes_ Winter’s Tale, but he did feel awful sorry for that Hermione woman spending so long as a living statue.

Or maybe the statue became the woman? Steve’s not quite sure—when he asks Mr. Kohn he just laughs and says _maybe she was safer under all that marble, anyway_.

On it goes, week after week, until Steve is complaining about the ending of a recent Nancy Drew and Mr. Kohn is handing him a wrapped-up rectangle with a bemused smile.

“Happy birthday, Steven.” The gift is in last week’s newspaper, and Steve takes it with reverent hands.

“Mr. Kohn, you didn’t need—”

“It’s common manners to say _thank you_ when given a gift,” Mr. Kohn says, bemused. “Go on, open it.”

The paper unwraps to a carefully repaired book called _Leaves of Grass_ that Steve’s never heard of. He knows better than to make a face about it, but something must have given him away because Mr. Kohn is laughing and explaining. “It’s poetry. Call it a hunch, and if you don’t like it you can trade it for something else.”

Steve makes his thank-yous and takes it home. He never does trade it back— _Leaves of Grass_ follows him through eleven years, five attempts at enlistment, and a week at Camp Leigh before the binding finally gives up the ghost.

He tells himself he’ll get a new copy when they inevitably send him home.

 

_And I, when I meet you, mean to discover you by the like in you._

*

Dr. Erskine gives him a chance, and then another, and then he’s gone and Steve is left standing in his wake, an anomalous marvel of modern science.

He is—everything is—the world feels _smaller_ , somehow. And not just because he’s twice the size he used to be. But the world is missing a mind that should have been in it, and that makes everything feel _less_.

They put him on a cot in medical and he sits there, for what could have been minutes or hours, furling and unfurling his fingers. His hands aren’t that much different than before—they’d always been a little over-large for his body, like great fins screwed on to too-small arms. They’re steadier now, and he’s got far better aim—though that might just be that he can finally really _see_ every little detail around him—but it’s almost like the procedure hadn’t given him a _new_ body, just… Taken the limits of what was already there and _pushed_. If he’d been born without illness, if he hadn’t had to scrape his way through the ‘30s, if he’d been one of those fellas Dr. Erskine hadn’t wanted to give the serum to, he might’ve grown into something like this.

Well, excepting his ability to lift up a RL 45 without breaking a sweat.

His right-hand, though. There’s something about that hand that’s got him more balled-up than anything else about his new body, and it’s barely two inches long. He uncurls his fingers slowly, holding his breath—which he can do for _forever_ now, jeez, it finally feels like using his lungs isn’t _work_ —but it hasn’t disappeared.

He’s got a soulmark on his hand, a scrawl of black on the inside of his ring-finger. It’s a name, almost, and one he—

The curtain around his cot shifts, and a man in a white coat steps through. Steve shoves his hands under his legs as the man—the doctor, though not one whose name he can remember—informs Steve that he’s here to do a check-up, to see if there are any side-effects of the procedure.

That it should be Dr. Erskine having this conversation is something he tries to ignore.

“Anything feel unusual?” the doctor asks, after poking his joints and taking his pulse and measuring, of all things, his blood pressure. Steve shoots him an incredulous look. “Anything unexpected, at least,” the doctor amends.

_Everything is smaller and I keep forgetting how long my limbs are and smacking the wall_ , he wants to say, _and then a little dust rains down because apparently I can shake walls now._

_I ran barefoot across ten city blocks and it was so easy I almost wanted to keep running._

_My eyesight is clearer than it’s ever been but I still don’t know where I’m going._

“No”, Steve says, thinking of the promise he made, of the wheeze of Erskine’s last breath, of _A.E. Stark_ written on his skin and the uncertain hope those first two letters allow.

 

_Your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only._

*

Steve has a couple of ideas as to what he’d like his soulmate to be like—not that he wouldn’t love them anyway, but if they’re meant to compliment him perfectly then he can’t really imagine they wouldn’t be something like he daydreams.

(The first, and most dangerous idea, is that maybe his soulmate will be _he_ instead of the generally assumed _she_. That’s a thought he keeps very, very, private.)

It feels like half the army thinks Peg’s his soulmate, which—well, he can’t help but feel a little flattered. She’s one hell of a woman, and whoever’s worthy of her must be pretty special, too.

His soulmate isn’t Peggy, but he wouldn’t be upset if it were someone like her. Someone with her unflinching bravery, with her nerves and spine of solid steel. Every time the world tells her _no_ she just goes ahead anyway. It’s a trait he admires and a quality he tries to emulate, and if _A.E. Stark_ has the same stubborn drive, well. That’s definitely something he could love.

He’d shown Bucky his mark nearly as soon as they’d gotten back from spitting in HYDRA’s face. Buck had taken one long look, then shook his head and slapped him on the back.

“Damn, Stevie. Couldn’t get a first name too?” Buck’s mark had come in years ago, a wandering scrawl over his shoulder that neither of them can really read. Steve’s happy with his name and initials.

“I’ll just file a request for one, won’t I,” Steve says, the grin spreading over his face taking all the sarcastic bite out of his response. Bucky shoves at his shoulder and Steve lets himself roll with the movement, like he would’ve when they were both in Brooklyn and a lot younger than they are now.

Steve had been able to taste the relief when he’d found Bucky on that table—he’d never had a friend like Buck, never had someone so loyal and reliable. He’d want that kind of friendship with his soulmate, too. Steve knows he’d feel that loyalty to _A.E._ , and he hopes he can inspire it to go both ways.

But even with all his daydreaming over what his soulmate might be like there’s no ignoring the obvious.

Howard Stark is obviously not _A.E. Stark_ , but there’s something about him that Steve finds fascinating. He’s not stuck on Mr. Stark or anything—there’s an awful lot of flash and bang in the man, and Steve’s not quite sure what it’s hiding—but there’s an undeniable spark to the man, an intense quality of brilliance that leaves him quietly captivated whenever they’re in the same room.

Watching him at the Expo with the not-quite-flying car hadn’t been enough to distract him from trying to enlist. Up close, with the war on the line and the promise of success Project Rebirth had given them all, it’s like watching the future come to life.

Steve’s always been a little soft for the hope the future promises. Maybe _A.E. Stark_ will have that same future in their eyes, just with a little more softness, too.

You’re not meant to talk about soulmarks—that he and Bucky had shared was a testament to their bond and the fact that he’d just pulled his best friend back from the dead—but Steve is desperate to know just that little bit more about _A.E. Stark._ There’s no promise he’ll survive this war, no promise that _A.E._ will either, and he—he needs to know.

In between storming HYDRA strongholds, Steve bullies himself into voicing the obvious question. Stark is in the SSR lab, shirt rucking up under his suspenders, hair flying wild, and a manic glint in his eye that usually means Steve’s going to get some high-advanced, possibly explosive new gadget.  

He clears his throat. “Mr. Stark—”

Stark whirls around, spots Steve, and shakes his head comically. “Come on Rogers, call me Howard,” he corrects, turning back to what ever he was working on. Steve knows from experience that the man can carry a conversation while inventing an entirely new technology, so he just steps forwards and keeps talking.

“Steve, then.” Stark nods absentmindedly, and Steve sets his shoulders in a tight line. He takes a deep breath and tells himself to be brave. “Do you have any siblings?” he asks, because he needs to know.

“Not that I know of,” Howard says, shooting an inquisitive look over his shoulder. “Why?”

Steve shrugs carefully. It feels out-of-place on his new frame, and probably looks just as ridiculous. “Just wondering. Bucky’s got three younger ones and I’m just… Thinking about what’s happening to ‘em.” He had been thinking about them, a little, so it wasn’t a total lie. He sends a silent apology to Mrs. Barnes anyway, for dragging in her family to cover his curiosity—but he can’t risk Howard putting _soulmate_ and _A.E. Stark_ together and maybe coming up with _court-martialed_.

Howard levels a look at Steve for a tense moment, and then _hmph_ s and turns back to his work. “Well, I’m the only Stark running around for anyone to worry about. Don’t even have any cousins,” Howard offers, attention officially gone. Steve makes an awkward goodbye, frowning as he walks out the door.

If Howard’s the only Stark around, then where’s his?

 

_How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring through the centuries?_

*

He loses Bucky as soon as he finds him.

At least, that’s how it feels. Steve can take a knife to the stomach and be fine in an afternoon, but there are some wounds that won’t heal. He takes to a bar, tries to at least drink the pain to numbness, but even that is gone.

“Steve?”

It’s Peggy. There’s dust in her hair and her usually impeccable uniform is rumpled and creased. She looks tired—Steve can empathize. She sits next to him, pours herself a finger of the ration whiskey he’s trying to drown in, and says nothing.

He drains his glass and feels nothing but empty. “I miss him,” he says, voice raw. “I already miss him.”

“I’m sorry.”

He smiles faintly. She’s worried for him, obviously, or she wouldn’t have been so gentle. He appreciates it, even if he had wanted to be alone.

He’s sure as hell lonely.

“He was my best friend,” he says, because Peggy’s being nice to him, because it’s obvious, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

Peggy pours them each a splash of the whiskey and raises her glass. “To Bucky Barnes,” she says, “Commando, hero… best friend.”

They drink. Steve thinks about being thirteen and feverish, sure he wanted to make it through but not sure it’d be better for everyone else. He thinks of a moment of melancholy, of Bucky, and of a promise.

He takes a long, hissing breath. “Buck had a soulmark, you know? And I didn’t, and he used to say it didn’t matter if I got one or not, said he’d be there ‘til—” his voice chokes. He swallows around the lump in his throat and looks away from Peggy’s sympathetic eyes. “I used to be so afraid I’d never get one and Bucky’d find his and that he’d—leave. And now he’s dead, and I’m the one with the mark, with a _name_ , of all things, and it’s all because of this,” he waves a hand around his body, shaking his head. “I’m the one who wanted this, you know? Not the war, but—to fight. Bucky just wanted to find his girl and love her.” He huffs bitterly. “So I got my war and Buck got a lie.”

They sit in silence for a long moment.

“I got my soulmark when I joined the army,” Peggy says.

Steve blinks. She’s looking at the empty bottle on the counter. “Congratulations,” he says, because it’s the thing to do. “Have you met h—them?”

Peggy smiles wryly. “You don’t have a woman’s name, do you?”

He stares at her, then swallows. “I don’t… not.”

“I do,” she says, like it’s a statement of fact and not a secret. Like she knows Steve won’t care; like she knows he will, but only for the kinship it sparks within him. “First and last name, right on my hip.”

“I bet she’s great.”

“I know she is,” she says softly. Then she shakes her head. “I’m not sure I’ll ever find her. I can hope, I can think about taking her dancing, but I knew the moment I got my mark that there were no promises.”

_There should have been_ , he thinks.

“I never was much good at dancing, but when you find her, I’ll take you both. Show you around the city.” Peggy smiles at the offer. Steve bites the inside of his cheek and thinks of the last time he was supposed to take a girl dancing, at Bucky’s behest. “He should’ve gotten that,” he says, voice raw. “He had a mark. He was supposed to find them and—and take them dancing.”

“I don’t think there are ‘ _supposed to’_ s,” Peggy says. “Not really.”

 

_Vigil final for you brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death, I faithfully loved you and cared for you living, I think we shall surely meet again.)_

*

There’s only one thing standing between this bomb and the city he grew up in and it’s the Atlantic Ocean. There’s not much of choice, when he puts it like that.

“I’ve got to put her in the water,” he radios back to the lab.

It’s Stark who responds first. “Give us coordinates, Rogers, we’ll find you someplace safe to land—”

“There’s no landing this thing,” Steve says, looking at the screen promising one hell of a boom when he hit something solid.

“Then give me a minute, I’ll think of something—”

“No time,” he says, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. He must be panicking, at least a little, since breathing feels like it used to, back when he couldn’t do it very well. “If I don’t go down now then it’ll be somewhere populated.” He takes one last look at the horizon, where the water and ice meet the great expanse of the sky, and pulls the controls until he’s heading straight for nothing.

He should—he should—he should tell Howard to make sure _A.E. Stark_ knows Steve loved them, whoever they are, and that they should move on but he just—can’t. Can’t get the words out, not before they put Peggy on and then it takes everything he has not to start crying.

“You still have to show me around New York,” she says, and even through the static of the radio he can hear her voice choking, “take us dancing.”

“Of course.” He can feel his heart beating in his ears, a solid and speeding _thump-thump_. “I promised, didn’t I?”

“Steve, you—”

“Take her dancing for me, Peg.” He says, the words falling out in a rush. The icy blue stretch of water below him rises up in a surge of inevitability. “Tell her Steve Rogers says hello, and take her dancing.”

“Steve—!”

 

_Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from shore to shore; Others will watch the run of the flood-tide; Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east; Others will see the islands large and small; Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high; A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them._

*

 “—waking up, everybody _calm down_.”

There is bright, bright light around him, a bunch of voices going quiet, and Steve feels cold and warm and exhausted.

He was talking to Peggy, he thinks, talking to Peggy and flying a plane and—and then—

Steve jolts to sit up, the movement sudden enough that all the blood goes rushing to his head and he is suddenly, wretchedly dizzy—like he hasn’t been since before the serum. The last he knew he was expecting to be dead, and yet here he was—and surely heaven wouldn’t _hurt_ this much, surely heaven wouldn’t be this cold.

“Captain? Captain Rogers?” asks a man in some sort of armor, all red and gold and flashing in the harsh lights. What must be his helmet, though Steve’s never seen anything like it, is tucked under one of his metal-covered arms and Steve squints, following the shining stretch of metal up toward a face he almost recognizes.

“…Howard?”

The man’s mouth falls to a flat line before twisting back into a smile. “Tony, actually, Tony Stark. His son.” _What?_ “We were trying to figure out how to put this better but, uh—Welcome to the future.”

Blood rushes through Steve’s ears in a howling mess of heat. The future. The _future_. He is—God. He flies a bomb into the ocean and when he wakes up a man in a metal suit with a face like Howard’s is claiming to be his son. To be—to be Tony _Stark_ , a Stark, another Stark. This man says _welcome to the future_ and it sounds like an impossible second chance.

_And to die is different than anyone supposed, and luckier_ , he thinks, because—maybe it is.

Steve blinks. His vison is turning fuzzy on the edges, and sigh that he’s about to lose consciousness. But he has to know, he has to _know—_ “Do you have any siblings?” He asks, and Tony Stark frowns down at him, his _no?_ ringing in Steve’s ears as he passes out.

 

_To frozen clods ever the spring’s invisible law returns._

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Steeb, his nap always gets interrupted. :-(
> 
> Poems referenced in this chapter (in order):  
> • [We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/we-two-how-long-we-were-foold)  
> • [Among the Multitude](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/among-multitude)  
> • [To a Stranger](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/to-a-stranger)  
> • [I Sing the Body Electric](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/i-sing-body-electric)  
> • [Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/vigil-strange-i-kept-field-one-night)  
> • [Crossing Brooklyn Ferry](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/crossing-brooklyn-ferry)  
> • [A child said, What is the grass?](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/child-said-what-grass)  
> • [Continuities](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/continuities)


	2. Till we have arrived home again

 

When Anthony Stark is born, his soulmark is an obvious pattern of ink across his tiny chest. His mother cries to read it, squints through tears and joy and pain at the proof her baby boy was born for love.

By the time he is five, Tony can read it for himself. He sounds out the words to the mirrors turning them right way, though some of them are things he doesn’t understand. He writes it down, a childish scrawl that does not capture the turns of the ‘w’s or the slide of the ‘e’s, but requires less contorting to read.

When he turns ten, his mother gives him a book of poetry with one page marked.

“It’s a bit above your reading level right now,” she says softly, laying the heavy book in his tiny hands, “but I think you ought to have it anyway.”

It’s by a man named Walt Whitman and inside it is Tony’s mark. It’s not a happy book, not really, but Tony likes it anyway. He doesn’t bother to show it to his father—he knows better than to expect Howard to be interested in anything outside of functioning robots, and even then, Tony’s not likely to get much interest.

He just needs to make something better, that’s all. Something more interesting.

Somehow he doesn’t manage it until his parents are already dead.

 

_They gave this child more of themselves than that._

*

There is darkness all around him, and silence broken only by his own labored breathing.

Tony gasps awake, eyes wide and blinking, feeling tethered and sluggish and like his throat is sandpaper on a steel file. There’s a tube in his nose and he spares a moment to think that it’s probably the worst feeling he’s ever experienced—

And then he tries to turn over and there’s a car battery tied to his chest and an electromagnet inside his body and panic, panic, this is what panicking feels like, oh god oh god _oh god_ —

Well.

Never say food and a series of threats in a foreign language did nothing to clear the mind. He hasn’t felt this focused since eight-shot espressos at MIT. His kidnappers have piles of his weapons and a thirst for the destruction Stark Industries is only supposed to peddle to Western countries. Stable governments. Forces for good.

What an employee-of-the-year job he did, that the middle of bum-fuck Afghanistan wanted his Wells Fargo Wagon come to visit so badly. Small wonder he found himself the Merchant of Death when death was flying off the shelves.

Whatever. He can deal with how these people got their hands on his tech once he’s out of this hellhole.

He’s soldering a new electromagnet together when Yinsen says, carefully as casual as if he were commenting on the terrible weather, “Your mark is very beautiful.”

Tony absolutely does not nearly burn himself in surprise. “Why is it that every conversation we have is about something I don’t want to talk about?”

“Is it something I would know?”

“You should know that just because you saved my life doesn’t mean I’m not fully equipped to ignore you,” Tony deflects. He makes a face. “I’m _more_ equipped to ignore you, even, you really should have—"

“Because it reads like Whitman,” Yinsen interrupts, voice as level as it always is. He lets a tiny little smirk slip onto his face. “Though my ear for American poetry is a little lacking.”

Tony scrubs a hand across his sweating face. “Yeah,” he says, voice hoarse.

“Which one?”

He squints hard at the other man. “…Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.”

“Ah! That is in New York, yes? Maybe you will meet them there.”

“Fucking hope not,” Tony mutters, and goes back to staring at the piles of Stark Industries crap lying around the cave. If he’s going to get the two of them out of here, he’s going to need something with more oomph than a car battery.

They make themselves a lot more oomph, but it’s still only one of them that makes it out. Seeing Rhodey’s relieved face, feeling an ache in his chest that has nothing to do with shrapnel, that almost makes it worth it.

Almost.

 

_It is not you alone who know what it is to be evil; I am he who knew what it was to be evil._

*

Ironman cannot save everyone. That was glaringly clear from before the suit even had a name. He tries, he does, for probably longer than advisable, but. He’s not enough. No collection of armor, no amount of tech, none of it is enough.

So when SHEILD approaches him about creating a team of heroes, it doesn’t take him long to say yes.

Two months later he’s living in a skyscraper with two superspies who act like middle schoolers, a very intelligent man with very stretchy pants, an alien god who’s a harder partier than Tony, and Janet Van Dyne. Who shrinks, flies, and keeps ragging on him about his design choices.

He loves every minute of it.

It does take them a while to start fighting together, to no one’s surprise. They’re each individually very good at whatever they do—Tony’s tested Barton’s vision and he swears it shouldn’t be humanly possible—but they’ve all gotten used to fighting solo.

They settle into teamwork, all conscious of the weirdness around the edges. Tony keeps an eye out for new heroes, gives some hands-off support to some small-time little guys saving one neighborhood at a time, and races Jan and Thor through the skies over Manhattan.

There’s still something not quite right, like there’s an empty spot in the line-up that is only mitigated when War Machine is on loan. That’s the only way Tony can think to describe it: an emptiness. A void where there should have been someone or something but no one can remember.

It’s the same kind of feeling that looking at his mark gives him.

The reactor had ended up just above his mark, one of the scars from the shrapnel trailing down into the top of the neat writing. He would think—if he didn’t know better, he would think the mark came second.

He knows better. And he doesn’t like to think about what it might mean, that he was always going to end up here. It says things about choice and identity that he doesn’t want to believe.

At least right now _here_ means on the Quinjet over the arctic, giving Clint shit for his crappy taste in country music—Tony could absolutely make a sexy tractor, but it sure doesn’t exist _yet_ —when the plane’s sensors give off a _ping_.

“What was that?” Jan asks, head swiveling toward the windows.

“J?”

“ _The Quinjet sensors are picking up an unexpected object outside_.”

Bruce adjusts his glasses. “An object? In the Arctic?”

Clint shoots forward to the console. “Did we find the Titanic?”

“The Titanic is a myth.”

Clint looks positively gleeful. “Nat, _please_ tell me this is another conspiracy theory—”

“It’s a plane,” Tony announces, looking up from the sensor readings. “Small craft, looks like it must have been buried and recently uncovered…”

“Global Warning?” Bruce suggests. “Some seismic activity?”

Tony shrugs. “There’re some wild energy readings coming off of it for a frozen pile of junk.”

“Shall we investigate, Avengers?” Thor booms.

When no one objects, Tony turns back toward the console. “J, find a solid landing spot nearby and put us down. Everybody suit up—Bruce, there’s some gear in the back if you want to come with.”

Fifteen minutes later they’re standing outside a once-futuristic plane with a HYDRA symbol on it.

“Well,” Jan states, “that’s not ominous.”

“Dibs on any secret Nazi gold,” Clint calls, bow in hand.

Natasha huffs. “Wasn’t gold.”

Instead of Nazi gold—real or fake—they find an uncomfortable number of thankfully disabled bombs, and—

And the impossible.

After years of searching—his father’s life spent searching—they found Captain America in the ice on _accident_.

 “At least we can finally give him a proper burial,” Tony murmurs inside the suit while Jan gasps over the comms. Natasha crouches down and starts tapping at her gauntlets, Clint is explaining to Thor that the man in the ice _isn’t_ a frost giant but a national icon, and Jan is buzzing around a mystified Bruce when—

“ _Sir_?”

“What is it, J?” Tony asks inside the helmet.

“ _I am detecting signs of life from—_ ”

Tony swears. “He’s _alive_? Captain America’s alive! Get him out of there, we’ve got to thaw him out—” He barks orders at the team and JARVIS until there’s a blue-tinged super solider dripping in his private jet.

The team is quietly freaking out over having found a Captain America _alive_ —or maybe that’s just Tony, holy shit holy _shit_ —when the man in question takes a shallow, rasping breath.

“He’s waking up, everyone _calm down_ ,” Tony says, mostly to himself. One moment the Captain is lying still—the next, he’s bolted into sitting up, eyes darting wildly around the room.

Tony nearly holds a placating hand up, then remembers the repulsors and thinks better of it. “Captain?” he asks, breath baited. “Captain Rogers?”

He watches as Captain America looks from his helmet to his gauntlets—no doubt the armor is baffling if you don’t remember any technology past the forties—to Tony’s face. Rogers squints, and then calls him by his father’s name.

Tony almost doesn’t care.

 

_O Captain! My Captain! Rise up and hear the bells; Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills._

*

He doesn’t want to like Captain America.

Liking Captain America, the impossibly living legend, would just be admitting that his father was right. That the man, the myth, the “good person” yardstick, was actually as good as Tony couldn’t be.

He doesn’t want to like Captain America, and honestly? He’s mostly ambivalent toward him. Sure, he’s a good person to have in a fight, a natural leader even if Ironman’s got better style, but mostly he’s just fine. Seeing the hero in the flesh mostly just reminds you that heroes are boring.

So while Tony’s glad he’s fighting with the good guys, and he doesn’t hate the _star-spangled man with a plan_ —want to brag about knowing legends, well, Tony lives two floors up from the _god of fucking thunder_ —he feels pretty confident in the fact that Howard was an exaggerating asshole and a bitter old man.

Then he meets Steve Rogers.

They are not the same, not really. Captain America is a hero built from decades of stories and tales and propaganda, a legendary figure for 20th century bedtime stories.

Tony grew up with Cap posters on his wall but even he remembers the infamous issue where Captain America called the AIDs crisis an _act of god_. Captain America is a symbol of whatever the country wanted _America_ to mean, a mutating myth that spent four years saying one thing and the next four saying the other.

Steve Rogers is only a man. Not that there’s much _only_ about him, even when he’s just sitting around the mansion in everyday clothing, reading whatever he can get his hands on. Not when he’s sketching the skyline or being nice to teenagers or deliberately misusing memes to get a rise out of Barton. Somehow, Steve Rogers is all the good of Captain America and none of the propaganda.

Plus he’ll swear up a streak as blue as his eyes and that, uh. That does things to Tony.

His usual reaction to when someone is doing things to him is to pay them to like him or poke them with a stick. This time he does a little of both.

Upgrading Cap’s gear is just a matter of practicality. He does the same for all the other Avengers, once he seduces Widow and Hawkeye into giving up their SHEILD issue crap. Even Bruce gets prototype after prototype, though his are focused more on containment than fight efficacy. Tony doesn’t really make anything for Thor—outside of a kick-ass training course—but Thor has a magic alien hammer that he uses to fly, so. He can source his own gear.

Really, it’s nothing unusual that he tests out different body armor or builds a one-of-a-kind motorcycle. He even takes a look at the shield, where he has to grudgingly admit to himself that the old man did a pretty solid job on that one—though Tony’s got mock-ups for a return device for the rare cases where Cap misses the rebound.

“It’s like a wireless yo-yo?” Rogers had summarized when Tony pitched the idea. “Okay.”

Tony had blinked at him. “How do you even know what a yo-yo is? Weren’t those invented in the sixties?”

Cap rolled his eyes. “We had yo-yo’s in the forties, Tony. Spinning tops, too.”

“Are you sassing me? See if I build you anything nice now,” Tony scoffed, and then quietly played acronym games until he could call the return device YO-YO.

So what if he spends a lot of time designing and testing Cap’s gear? He spends the time he needs to spend on everyone’s equipment—if he didn’t, he’d be sending them into battle with sub-standard gear. He couldn’t live with himself otherwise. Maybe he spends a little extra time of Cap’s equipment, but that’s just because it’s so detailed. He’d do the same for anybody else.

He maybe wouldn’t be so set on needling anybody else, though.

There’s just something about Rogers that draws Tony to him. And everyone else on the planet, obviously, but Tony thinks he wins points for worst idea. Figures he’d fall face-first into annoying the Star-Spangled Man as part of some faux-apathetic game of _look at me, look at me_.

The nicknames are probably the most schoolgirl-crush of him, but Tony’s always been a nickname. It’d be more unusual if Rogers didn’t get any. There’s _Cap_ , of course, but everyone starts calling him that eventually. Tony adds _Winghead_ , _Captain Frisbee_ , and a bucket-load of other quips that he spins off the top of his head whenever they’re in vaguely near each other.

He calls Rogers _Capsicle_ for all of a month before he notices that the flinch it causes is less a Tony-is-annoying-and-I-wish-he’d-shut-up flinch and more a deep-seated-emotional-wound flinch.

Let it never be said Tony Stark doesn’t know trauma when he sees it.

Tonight he’s seeing it stare out of the mirror after a rare attempt of a decent night’s sleep failed when he can’t stop seeing sand and fire every time he closes his eyes. God, he wishes he could just pass the fuck out.

Ah, hell.

Tony throws on a ratty MIT sweatshirt that was probably once Rhodey’s and makes his way down to the kitchen. He’ll just grab some coffee to wake him up properly because there’s no way he’s getting back to sleep at this point, and then head into the lab. Legolas has been whining for some new trick arrows anyway, might as well do something productive.

It takes him less than a minute to figure out he’s not the only one awake. But then, Rogers was kind enough to turn on a side-lamp in the living room for Tony’s night-vision to dilate around. He stares at the back of Roger’s head for a long moment, thinking. About turning around and going back to bed, about locking himself in the workshop and building a projectile that spits goo, about the shimmer of blonde hair in lamplight, the burn of sand and fire and ice, that telling little flinch.

Moth, meet flame.

“Little late for a nightcap, Cap,” he says lowly, telegraphing his footsteps as carefully as he can. Rogers still jolts to look at him, but at least Tony doesn’t get punched in the face. “Can’t sleep?”

Cap hesitates, like even here he’s uncomfortable with lying, but eventually settles on “No.”

And that, that’s a _no_ Tony’s said enough to know it means fathoms more. He’s read Cap’s file, and—yeah, the guy deserves to have some issues on par with Tony’s own. No great shock if he’s awake for the same reasons.

“Yeah,” Tony says, dragging out the sigh at the end. “Me either.” Someone else might ask if he wanted to talk about it; but Tony’s never wanted to talk about it, and for all their differences he’s got a hunch that neither does Steve. At least, not right now. Not with him.

“Want to watch some Looney Tunes?” he asks, and the mix of surprise and relief on Steve’s face convinces him he made the right choice.

 

_That you are here—that life exists, and identity; That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse._

*

Steve finds him in the library, a real-life pulp-and-paper book in his hands. It’s not something Tony does very often, but he’s feeling suitably maudlin tonight and this book is one he can’t put on an e-reader.

Cap clears his throat and Tony looks up from his reading, curious. “Hey Cap, what’s up?”

Steve stumbles through the first few seconds, but then it’s like he’s drawn himself together, pulled up the bull-headed bravery that’s so worrying when they’re fighting, and Tony understands that whatever he’s come to say hadn’t been easy.

It isn’t even easy for Tony, when Steve says he wants to know what happened to all the Commandos—to Peggy.  

Tony has been… not _expecting_ this, but bracing for it, and he’s still not sure what to say. The truth seems the only thing allowed.

“She lived,” he starts, “for so long. She—well, she founded SHEILD, which you probably knew—from the acronym alone, right—and she spent her entire life being better than other people wanted to let her be. And daring everyone else to be better than she expected.” He grins a little, to himself. “Never gave an inch, that was Aunt Peggy.”

There’s a wounded sort of look on Steve’s face that makes Tony’s stomach twist, and he launches into a babble just to fill the silence. “I remember this one time where I, uh, was trying to deal with a, a _problematic element_ at boarding school—not the work, jesus, that shit was easy, but a person-shaped element—anyway, anyway, Aunt Peggy found me planning something out and I was so, so worried she’d be disappointed, you know, for not playing by the rules or talking to an adult or whatever, but instead she just told me that if I was going to do something about it then I might a well do it _properly_ and—” It had been the first time someone had told him to fix something and actually helped him do it. “She and Aunt Angie were the absolute best visitors, I swear. Broke my seven-year-old heart when I figured out neither one of them could be my soulmate,” he finishes, dragging his mouth closed before he can ramble like an idiot for another five minutes.

Not that he shuts up for too long, because Steve’s looking confused and Tony opens his mouth as soon as he realizes why. “Aunt Angie—uh, Angela Martinelli—she was Aunt Peggy’s wife.”

“Oh,” Steve breathes, a heartbreaking smile unwinding on his face. “She found her.”

“Sorry?”

Steve looks down at his hands braced together in his lap. Tony thinks unbidden back on a history of people trying to perfect the human form, and how no one had made hands so well as Sarah Rogers.

“Peg had a woman’s name on her hip, said she got it when she joined the army. She told me about it after—well, she was making a point. A couple of them, actually.” Steve grins sheepishly to himself, and Tony swallows thickly. “That—uh, Angela—must have been her. Right?” he asks, eyes wide and hopeful. Tony just nods, but it sparks a brilliant smile across Steve’s face. “I told her I’d take them dancing once they found each other,” he says wistfully. “I’m glad they did.”

What must it be like, Tony wonders—though not for the first time—to wake up and realize all your friend’s happy moments have already happened, and you were there for none of them? To not have been there when Rhodey found Carol, when Pepper first met her niece, when Jan learned to fly. To have missed all the things you thought the future would bring.

“They got married twice,” he recalls. “Once in the UK, once here. Best weddings I’ve ever been to. Them and the Jarvises were the only reason I ever wanted to find my—” he cuts himself off because _god_. There’s sharing and then there’s oversharing and implying the uncomfortable truth about someone who Cap probably considered a friend. No point in ruining a smile. He’s done that enough.

“Do you have a favorite?” Cap asks, and Tony blinks in a stupor for the too-long amount of time it takes to see Steve’s indicating the book in Tony’s lap.

For a moment, Tony wants to say _no_ and leave the library forever. Whitman has always been special to him, and this book—creased and marked and the most important gift his mother ever gave him—is special beyond that.

But the moment passes and he… He wants to give this to Steve. He wants him to understand, so much that he’s willing to take the risk that Steve won’t, and that Tony will be even more alone.

He clears his throat.

“ _The untold want, by life and land ne’er granted,_ ” he says quietly, “ _Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find._ ”

He feels gutted when he finishes, exposed. Like he’s just handed over the secret to Tony Stark, the fully labelled dissection of every hope and regret he’s ever had—like Steve could look through him, now, and see every wound he’s ever hidden, open, bleeding chest and all.

But Steve is looking at him with something close to fondness, and that ruins him like no rejection ever could.

 

_And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man’s life?_

*

JARVIS is a no-good AI who’s far too fond of Pepper for Tony’s self-preservation. A better AI—a more _loyal_ AI—would’ve have warned him not to set foot on the common floor of the Avenger’s suite when his CEO was lying in wait to eviscerate him.

He’s unnoticed when he first leaves the elevator—Pep’s back is turned, immersed as she is in conversation with Cap. Tony eyes the kitchen and the stretch of exposed living room he has to cross before he’s out of sight. Open floorplans are terrible for avoiding people.

He makes it halfway to safety before Steve catches his eye and Tony freezes in place. Steve quirks an eyebrow and Tony lifts a finger to his lips, resuming his quiet creep away from Pepper. With any luck, Steve’ll keep Pep distracted until Tony’s home free. He’ll throw Cap a party later.

“Hi Tony,” the bastard says.

Tony winces as Pepper’s head whips around to zero-in on him. “Tony!” she cries.

He immediately course-corrects to make it look like he was walking over to them the whole time, ambling casually over to their position by the couches. He’s been more convincing.

“ _Voices I love call me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as I approach_ ,” he drawls, making a face at a quietly smug Steve.

“Should I ask what was so important you had to skip _another_ shareholder meeting?” Pepper asks shrewdly.

“Uh,” Tony says, because the truth is he’d gotten distracted trying to teach the ‘bots to play catch. “Avengers stuff?” One look at Pep’s unimpressed face has him changing tactics. “Didn’t I make you CEO? What’s the point if I still have to go to boring meetings?”

“For me to run your company better than you,” she replies, and then points a perfectly-manicured finger at him. “You’re still a majority shareholder and that means You. Attend. Board meetings.”

“Record ‘em and I’ll watch the highlights.”

“Anthony Edward Stark!” Pepper snaps, and _ah shit_. He must’ve pissed her off if she’s using the full name. “When you don’t go to meetings, it looks like you don’t respect my authority. And that means no one else does.”

Tony scoffs. “That’s bullshit. Why would I have signed SI over if I didn’t respect you?”

“I’m not saying it makes sense,” Pep responds, making her _I hate old rich dudes_ face. Tony loves that face because it’s not her _Tony, you idiot_ face, even if he fits two of the qualifiers. _Only_ _two_. “But when I tell you to attend a meeting, it’s because I need you to _attend it_.”

“Absolutely everyone should respect you, Pep, even without my say-so.”

“You’re telling me?” she asks dryly.

Tony grins at her. “J, next time Pep tells me to go to a board meeting—and there’s not, like, a giant hamster attacking the city—I absolutely have to go.”

“ _Understood, sir.”_

“Thank you,” Pepper says, then turns to say goodbye to Steve and remind Tony about that paperwork he still hasn’t signed. He’ll do it in triplicate and send some Jimmy Choos to apologize.

He watches her leave until the elevator doors close. “I should get her one of those Uncle Sam posters, just Pep glaring and _because I said so_ on the bottom. What do you think?” he asks, turning to Steve. Who is looking dumbly at him and not responding. Tony frowns. “Hello? Earth to Cap?”

“Anthony Edward… A.E.” Steve turns to him, face a baffling dawn of comprehension. “You’re A.E. Stark.”

“Sure am,” Tony replies, bemused. “Bunch of family names shoved together. All terrible, if you ask me, I’m sure as hell not going around being called _Anthony_ , jesus—"

Steve abruptly shoves his hand in Tony’s face, palm out. He blinks, jerking his head back, then stares at the scribble of black on Cap’s finger. There, in very familiar handwriting, is a signature Tony’s never actually used.

He sits down.

 _Oh shit_ , he thinks, or maybe says aloud.

“Um,” Steve says. Definitely aloud, then.

Tony blanches and raises his hands in an inelegant flap of _wait, wait._ “That’s not a, a _bad_ ‘oh shit’—I’m Captain America’s soulmate—” _oh god oh god_ —“no way is that a bad thing, well, ok, I guess maybe for everyone else on the planet? And homophobes or whatever, and uh, the president maybe, but whatever, who cares about them? Anyway, that’s solidly a _shock and surprise_ kind of ‘oh shit’.” He should really, really shut up, or at least say something intelligent. “I mean, whew, congratulations Steve, you’ve rendered me speechless, do you even know what kind of accomplishment that is? Uh, well, you probably know very, very well—”

“You don’t sound very speechless,” Steve says, the fond amusement in his voice doing fluttery things to Tony’s already tempestuous insides.

 “Semantics. I’m emotionally speechless, it’s a whole,” he waves his hands around again, “thing.”

Steve is smiling softly at him, stupid hands and rambling sentences and all. Tony swallows thickly. “Uh,” he says, mind gone blank.

Steve shifts on his feet, pulling his hand back in and rubbing his other thumb over the inside skin of his fingers. “I’ve had this since the serum,” he says, soft and grinning. “I kept asking your—Howard about increasingly obscure relations. I kept thinking he’d cottoned on.”

“He knew you had a soulmate,” Tony remembers. “He—he said you told Peggy to find her when you, uh, crashed.”

Steve’s brow furrows. Then he laughs, shaking his head. “No, that’s not—No.”

In the mid-afternoon sunlight streaming through the tower windows, Steve Rogers looks like the impossible made real. His hair is slightly mussed, his face lightly flushed, and Tony’s sure he’s never seen something more wonderful. He’s staring, maybe, but how could he not?

“Um,” Steve looks down at him, biting at his lower lip. Tony wants to bite it for him and kiss away the sting. “Do you—”

“Yes,” he blurts, launching up from the couch and grabbing for his shirt. He rucks the fabric up until the hem is across the arc reactor and his soulmark is in full view.

His mark has been a constant presence since the day he was born. Tony knows it by heart, now, knows the curves of the letters and the shapes of the question marks. He’s sat for hours and hours, thinking and puzzling over what it meant, what it meant, _who_ it meant. He could lead a lecture on readings of the text it came from, literary criticism and wild theses that make this assertion or that claim. Tony could rant about Whitman’s varying influences, the period of his life when it was written, the historical context and metatextual references and all sorts of ridiculous conjecture.

He’s probably the foremost expert on _this one passage_ , but he didn’t understand it until now.

_What is it, then, between us? What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not._

“Oh,” Steve exhales, reaching his hand out to unconsciously trace the swirls of Tony’s mark. His touch is warm electricity, sparking under Tony’s skin. “Walt Whitman.”

“ _Crossing Brooklyn Ferry_ ,” Tony confirms. He can see the soft fan of Steve’s eyelashes across his cheeks, the gut-twisting look of open wonder on his face. “More apt than I had imagined, as it turns out.” Impossible to misinterpret, now that he understands.

“Can I kiss you?” Steve asks, eyes flickering over Tony’s mouth, and he _wants_ in a sudden, visceral flood.

“Please,” he says, then takes Steve’s face in his hands and kisses him himself. Steve’s hands are warm when he wraps them around Tony’s waist, the inside of his mouth hot and liquid, molten and lovely. Tony slides an arm around Steve’s shoulders, fists a hand in his hair, loses himself in the rhythm of give and take. Steve kisses like he wants Tony immediately and forever, a heady intensity that makes Tony imagine staying here all day.

Maybe he will. Maybe it’s what he was made for after all.

Steve pulls back, grinning dopily at him and knocking their foreheads together. His gaze turns softer, thoughtful, and Tony can’t help but hope he’ll look at him like that for the rest of their lives.

“What?” he asks, voice low and breathy.

“Just thinking,” Steve says, stroking a thumb up and down Tony’s cheek bone. “You know, when you first told me who you were I was—well, really confused and slightly panicky—but I was… happy. Hopeful. Because it meant that I hadn’t lost my chance. That I still might find my soulmate—find you.”

“Steve,” he says, then stops.

What more is there to say? A lot, eventually, but right now—right now they have just found each other. The two of them, hurtling through time and space and trauma, broken and bent and still in the same place, at the same time, with the same future ahead of them.

What more is there to say, really, but the truth?

Tony smiles. “Here I am.”

 

_Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost._

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony’s chapter is longer because he has to share (and that’s how I justified writing so much of him being a thirsty ass bitch)
> 
> Poems referenced this chapter (in order):  
> • [We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/we-two-how-long-we-were-foold)  
> • [There was a child went forth every day](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/there-was-child-went-forth-every-day)  
> • [Crossing Brooklyn Ferry](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/crossing-brooklyn-ferry)  
> • [O Captain! My Captain!](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/o-captain-my-captain)  
> • [O Me, O Life](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/o-me-o-life)  
> • [The Untold Want](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/untold-want)  
> • [When I Read the Book](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/when-i-read-book)  
> • [Continuities](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/continuities)
> 
> I yell about fandom over [here](https://glass-es-say.tumblr.com/)!


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